Chicago based InCUBATE would be noteworthy if it was a run of the mill non-profit , but it deserves even more consideration and support for its attempt to innovate itself by developing new models for art funding and keeping its own institutional status as an open line of inquiry.

There was just one significant upset Thursday, but plenty of top seeds could face challenges during Friday's action.

Top seeds carried the day in the East bracket, except that Elena Filipovic knocked off Steve Dietz. Also in the East, Massimiliano Gioni, Hon Hanru, Michael Fehr, Hamza Walker, and Simon Sheikh all advanced.

The big upset of the day occured in the West bracket where Kitty Scott took out Nicholas Bourriaud. Joseph del Pesco, Lars Bang Larsen, and Christian Rattemeyer also won.

In the South bracket we had Mary Jane Jacob, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Jens Hoffmann advancing, and in what is likely a bracket buster for some (High Low & in between), Matthew Higgs was upset by Francisco Bonami.

Finally, we have the North bracket seeing Dan Cameron and Lisette Smits advance.

We have somewhat solved our internet access at sea problems, but access is not reliable and we may not get updates up as soon as we'd like. The bracket won't be posted again until the Sweet Sixteen, so you'll have to pencil in winners until then .

We are certainly sympathetic to Claire Pentecost's Public Amateur project (apparently stalled or in progress):

It started in an effort to theorize a paradigm of the artist, which is well under way in practice. Under this paradigm the artist serves as conduit between specialized knowledge fields and other members of the public sphere by assuming a role I have called the Public Amateur.

What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become something which is related only to objects and not to individuals, or to life. That art is something which is specialized or which is done by experts who are artists. But couldn't everyone's life become a work of art? Why should the lamp or house be an art object, but not our life?

Okay, so there's a lot to unpack here, but his heart's in the right place.

Richard Shusterman's Practicing Philosophy: Pragmatism and the Philosophical Life requires extensive commentary. We hope to get around to said commentary soon. For now we just want to note that Shusterman is not widely cited in discussions of "social practice," yet should be widely read and cited. In addition to the aforementioned book, his Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art provides a strong argument against the privileging of "professional" philosophy (the discursive) over the philosophical life (artful living). Clearly, professional art institutions as currently constituted are poorly equipped to register life practices in any but the most rudimentary form. A caveat from Shusterman's acknowledgments is important here:

This book argues for extending the conception and practice of philosophy beyond the borders of its professionalized academic establishment. To demand more of philosophy is not to deny the worth of its current academic practice and institutions. But, to prevent such confusion, I here explicitly acknowledge the value of those institutions and especially my debt to them in the writing of this book.

Echoing this, as we too have argued for non-professional, amateur, and even dilettante practices and been misunderstood as dismissing the institutional art world altogether, we also "explicitly acknowledge" their value even if the courtesy is not frequently reciprocal...

"...[to the ancient Greeks] philosophy was above all an apprenticeship in wisdom; a mode of life rather than a discourse."

Ferry points out that Christian scholars (mostly 13th century) co-opted Greek philosophy and made it a mere tool in the service of theology. Philosophy was no longer a field of engagement, but a means. This instrumental employment of "a mode of life," is largely how we see the state of contemporary art, but most egregiously (or cynically perhaps) social practices...